Scaling all UI elements when using an external monitor

Question

When I use my Macbook Pro's internal monitor, I have the following options in the Display settings menu:

The best thing here is the Scaled option, which means that I can use the native resolution of the screen and rescale all UI elements bigger or smaller depending on my taste and they still look very sharp.

However, when I connect my Macbook to a 2K monitor, the Scaled option is not available, I can only set the resolution. The Display settings menu looks somewhat like this:

I don't want to change the resolution of my external monitor since I always want to use the native resolution of the monitor to achieve maximum sharpness. However, in my opinion the default UI size of the Mac is a bit too small on a typical 27" 2K screen so I would like to scale all UI elements bigger (I mean all, not just fonts) as it is possible to do using the internal monitor.

According to some screenshots that I found, the scaled menu is available at least for this 4K monitor:

So my question is: Why isn't the scaled option always available when using an external monitor with Mac?

By the way, the equivalent option in Windows is to change the DPI settings, which causes all elements to look bigger and sharp and it works on all displays:

Answer 1

The OS X UI is not resolution-independent, the only thing you can do is to change the resolution. Which is essentially what OS X does on HiDPI screens when switching to Larger Text or More Space, but since they are retina displays, you can't see that the resolution in some cases is not native, which you definitively can on non-retina displays.

There is a terminal command to change the interface size (which I can't seem to find right now, but I have tried once in 10.6 I believe), but it doesn't work well, especially in 3rd party applications. Some are absolutely unusable.

Answer 2

The answers from Amida and Ornataweaver are incorrect and should perhaps be removed to avoid confusion around this issue.

The Display settings panels from El Capitan and High Sierra do appear to mean different things, but adjusting the scaling setting in High Sierra does not changing the UI scaling. As in El Capitan, it just changes the resolution of the monitor. Kevin Grabher's earlier reply is correct and remains correct, even under Mojave.

UI scaling was not available in MacOS El Capitan, and it has not been available in any version of MacOS.

Those using high resolution monitors who want to make sure they are using all that screen real estate need to make sure the monitor is set to its native resolution in the Displays control panel, and then adjust the size of the Dock and the Finder icons to something usable. There is no way to modify the Menubar text size.

If you are using a high resolution screen with a laptop, you will have to readjust the Dock and Finder icons when the monitor is disconnected, then set them again when you are back using the monitor. It's kind of a pain.

I cannot understand why UI scaling is still not available in MacOS, especially at a time when all sorts of display sizes and resolutions are becoming common, but this is where we stand as of January, 2019.

I would love to see an app that made this process a little less painful. It'd be nice to have something that detected the monitor being connected or disconnected and made these changes automatically.

Answer 3

You can use the app RDM to scale any monitors but honestly it is not perfect for 1080p monitors because 1280 HiDPI is designed for 2K monitors like the internal one. On my 60" 1080p monitor it looks a big blurry everywhere, so much worse than the native scale mode while the font does look too small. So I would actually just prefer having bigger fonts on 1080p monitors.

Answer 4

In the Display preferences hold down Option and then click on scaled. It will show additional resolutions.

You may need to use CMD + F1 to refresh the display.

Also, you can turn on mirror display to test resolutions before applying them.

Answer 5

This depends on the OSX version you are using.

On a MacBook Pro late 2013 with El Capitan, I can change the resolution but not the scaling.

On a MacBook pro mid 2015 with High Sierra, I can change the UI scaling like you wish to do.

Answer 6

It seems that it depends on the model of the mac, instead of the OS. And the monitor. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206587

It might be a marketing strategy to allow this feature on certain brands. My MacBook is retina, so it has "HiDPI mode" capability. Yet apple doesn't allow me to use this ready feature. They certainly know about it.

Answer 7

I had success with RDM as well to sync my 1080p monitor to my 1440p mointor. Though i have a bit pixelation of text on 1080p screen because of less pixel density. Are anyone aware of a way to blur a 1080p screen so the pixelation is more smooth. I would imagine a tiny blur might be able to improve it.

Answer 8

I have just run into this problem switching from a Dell laptop that blew up to a new 2019 Mac Book Pro.

On Windows, I could use my 4k external monitor and scale some elements up and it worked most of the time very nicely.

I really think it is upsetting not being able to use my monitor at the full resolution without everything being absolutely tiny.

I have just found a script that supposedly can at least give me more scaled options so I can get an as high resolution as possible...but it still won't be 4k!